Various kinds of paper dictionaries cannot satisfy the productive needs of EFL/ESL learners.With this in mind,McAlp ine and Myles designed a new type of monolingual electronic dictionary.Coincidentally,the fourth edition of the Longman Dic tionary of Contemporary English(LDOCE)(Summers 2003)was published with a supporting CD-ROM in 2003.The per ceived guiding principle of the CD-ROM design was remarkably similar to that of McAlpine and Myles’design.It can be as sumed that the CD-ROM will provide EFL/ESL learners with strong support in their writing.